Untitled -- Piet Hein

(Poem #1722) Untitled (for Expo 67) We travel where ever mankind reigns and find good men in all the worlds domains and recognize them as a kind of Danes. -- Piet Hein

Today's grook is not as polished or clever as most of Hein's work, but I
think it is all the funnier for that. This is the humour of the utterly
simple, a thoroughly timeworn idea whose sole claim to funniness is that it
rhymes and scans. On the surface, not the world's greatest grook, yet Hein
has nailed the sentiment and tone so precisely, and with such perfect timing,
that it made me laugh out loud where many of his cleverer poems merely raised
a smile of appreciation.

martin

Dream Interpretation -- Piet Hein

(Poem #1653) Dream Interpretation Simplified. Everything's either concave or -vex, so whatever you dream will be something with sex. -- Piet Hein

"Epigrammatic" is too weak a word for today's poem - it is one of those
poems that seems to have been written to be quoted. It has that combination
of insight and pithy phrasing that make it almost irresistible to drop
into a discussion wherever appropriate (and often when not!), and needless
to say, I have been far from immune to the temptation. (Anecdotally, it
really does work to get someone off that particular hobbyhorse - there is
nothing much one can say in reply to it.)

I suspect part of my liking for the poem is the fact that Hein shares my
annoyance with the overpervasive aspects of dream interpretation and Freudian
psychology (in another of his grooks he says

  She gave me hope
  she gave me love,
    with bounty unalloyed.
  But what she had of faith,
  alas,
    she gave to Freud.

which leaves his feelings on the matter in little doubt). I also love his
ability to sum up an entire argument in a few well-chosen words (a talent
that is very much in evidence throughout his body of work) - there is a
satisfaction to watching him at work that is quite independent of which side
of the argument he's chosen.

That said, I must admit I like this more as a quote than as a poem - the
verse itself feels slightly 'off', so it's not as much fun to recite as some
of Hein's other grooks. Nevertheless, it's definitely one of the more
memorable ones.

martin

An Ethical Grook -- Piet Hein

Guest poem submitted by Benjamin Paul Withy :

(Poem #1523) An Ethical Grook I see and I hear and I speak no evil; I carry no malice within my breast; yet quite without wishing a man to the Devil one may be permitted to hope for the best. -- Piet Hein

This only sort of fits "the poet cranky" theme.  While I'm sure this was
written in jest, as so many of Hein's poems are, I feel it is a lovely turn
of phrase which most people can appreciate the sentiment behind.  I think
I've already exceeded the length of the poem with my comment so I'll stop
here.

Similarity -- Piet Hein

(Poem #1303) Similarity Commutative Law No cow's like a horse, and no horse like a cow. That's one similarity anyhow. -- Piet Hein

Quite apart from its poetic merits, this is a pretty neat paradox. It's
amazing the amount of sheer thoughtprovokingness Hein manages to pack into
what is, on the surface, practically a children's rhyme. Nor is this an
isolated instance - his collection of around 10000 grooks is an astonishing
blend of brilliance and silliness.

I'm reminded somewhat of Stephen Crane, another master of the short,
thought-provoking poem - but there's a significant difference in approach.
Whereas Crane's originality is almost obtrusive, Hein delights in pointing
out things that everyone *knows*, but just never thought of. His
characterisation of a pineapple as "sweet and undefinable" remains the best
description I've ever seen of the fruit, and that's in large part because I
knew exactly what he meant the minute I read it.

Likewise today's poem - it's easy to 'bah' it on the grounds of triviality,
or 'mere wordplay', but if you stop to think about it, it's actually
something that everyone might have known, but no one ever thought about, or,
more precisely, no one ever noticed the neatness of. The poem itself isn't
one of his most quotable, but I loved the idea behind it.

martin

A Psychological Tip -- Piet Hein

Guest poem sent in by Seema Ramanarayanan

(Poem #1156) A Psychological Tip Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, and you're hampered by not having any, the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny. No - not so that chance shall decide the affair while you're passively standing there moping; but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what you're hoping -- Piet Hein

I had the hardest time deciding which of the Piet Hein poems to send in to
this list :). They're all absolutely WONDERFUL. He calls his poems "Grooks"
and apparently he wrote em in several languages!  I had read this poem years
ago and went back looking for it when a friend of mine responded to my last
guest poem ("The instruction manual") complaining that I never send him a
poem that can make its point without being 300 words long.

Biography:
Piet Hein (1905-1996) was a Danish poet and scientist with wide ranging
interests. Millions of his countrymen knew him as Kumbel, the pen name he
used for his poetry. He was a genius with many different sides. In addition
to discovering the Soma cube, he created a new geometrical form, the
"super-ellipse", which is something in between the rectangle and the
ellipse. The form also came in a 3D version and was then called "the super
egg" or "the super-ellipsoide".  As an artist and constructor, Piet Hein in
the 50's and 60's gave form to beautiful pieces of furniture, and he
contributed to make "Scandinavian design" become an international
conception. Internationally he always tried building a bridge between the
"hard" technical and natural sciences and the "soft" humanistic subjects.

Here's the link to the website I copied the biography from and it also has
his other poems. Enjoy!!!

[broken link] http://www.ctaz.com/~dmn1/hein.htm

Seema

What Love is Like -- Piet Hein

(Poem #1092) What Love is Like Love is like a pineapple, sweet and undefinable. -- Piet Hein

This has got to be one of the nicest analogies I have seen - surprising,
even a little silly, but oh-so-apt, and with an undefinable sweetness of its
own that has me smiling and quoting it to myself at odd intervals. And then
there's the rhyme - it takes a considerable existing reputation to get away
with rhyming "pineapple" with "undefinable", but having gotten away with it,
it only serves to make the poem all the more memorable.

The obvious comparison is with Nash, but despite the superficial similarity,
I don't think today's poem is all that Nashian. True, it's a short poem with
an outrageous rhyme, but unlike a lot of Nash's work, the rhyme isn't really
the point of the grook - it just serves to add impact to the simile.

martin

Prayer (to the sun above the clouds) -- Piet Hein

(Poem #1029) Prayer (to the sun above the clouds) Sun that givest all things birth Shine on everything on earth! If that's too much to demand Shine at least on this our land If even that's too much for thee Shine at any rate on me -- Piet Hein

Indeed.

-martin

Links:

  We've run a couple of Hein's grooks:
    Poem #668, "On Problems"
    Poem #823, "Astro-Gymnastics"

  The former also has a biography and several links attached.

Astro-Gymnastics -- Piet Hein

(Poem #823) Astro-Gymnastics Do-it-yourself grook Go on a starlit night, stand on your head, leave your feet dangling outwards into space, and let the starry firmament you tread be, for the moment, your elected base. Feel Earth's colossal weight of ice and granite, of molten magma, water, iron, and lead; and briefly hold this strangely solid planet balanced upon your strangely solid head. -- Piet Hein

Today's grook is rather atypical, in that it is not particularly
epigrammatic, pithy or aphoristic. However, it does share in the other main
quality that most of the grooks possess - it reveals Hein's delightfully
quirky sense of play, to say nothing of his keen perception and his
occasional trick of deftly turning established ideas on their heads.

The paradigm shift is handled beautifully - from the initial 'leave your
feet dangling outwards into space' to the wonderful image in the last four
lines, I can not just visualise but almost *feel* what he means. Definitely
one of my favourite grooks, despite its unconventional nature.

Links:

We've run one other grook: poem #668

The comments to which also contain a biography
  http://www.powerweb.net/playandlive/piethein.htm

and a bunch of other links.

-martin

On Problems -- Piet Hein

What collection of epigrams would be complete without at least one of Hein's
sparkling little grooks? Here's one of my favourites...

(Poem #668) On Problems Our choicest plans have fallen through our airiest castles tumbled over because of lines we neatly drew and later neatly stumbled over. -- Piet Hein

If ever someone deserved the label of 'Renaissance Man', it was surely Piet
Hein[1], mathematician, scientist, inventor, engineer, artist, poet and
above all, genius. It would be hard to say what the most significant of
Hein's many accomplishments was, but high among them is surely the invention
and perfection of the grook.

[1] and all the actual Renaissance men, of course <g>

Hein has left behind a body of work consisting of around 10000 of these
grooks - an impressive achievement by any standard. But what exactly is a
grook? 'Grook' ('gruk' in Danish) is a word invented by Hein to describe his
short, aphoristic poems. There being no formal definition, the best I can do
is try to capture the unmistakable, but surprisingly elusive spirit
underlying Hein's poems.

Pithy, perceptive, varying from the gently quirky to the funny, and with a
deceptively simple style that hides their richly multifaceted nature while
robbing it of none of its impact - the average grook reads like something
between a nursery rhyme and a proverb, and like them, is absolutely
distinctive. Indeed, that is what most impresses me about Hein's grooks -
how, with very little in the way of formal structure, they manage to be so
strongly stamped with his very individual style.

As for today's poem - not only does it speak for itself; it does so far
better than I could hope to.

Links:

Here's an excellent biography:
http://www.powerweb.net/playandlive/piethein.htm

Particularly nice to find was Hein's quote on his invention of the
superellipse - "Man is the animal that draws lines which he himself then
stumbles over." A rare insight into the genesis of a grook - compare this
quote with the polished verse form above.

Hein not only wrote and translated all his grooks, he illustrated them too.
Here's a sampling: [broken link] http://www.dataphone.se/~bm/PietH.html

Doing a google search on grooks brings up several pages full of them -
here're some of the biggest collections
- [broken link] http://www.wicke.org/priv/Grooks.htm
- http://hjem.get2net.dk/san/grooks.html

While Hein's grooks are out of print in English, and hence hard to find,
they do appear to be getting reprinted:
[broken link] http://www.borgen.dk/engelske/piet_hein.htm

Amazingly enough, the Britannica does not have an entry for Hein; he is
mentioned in passing in their article on the Soma Cube.

-martin